On one of my sites I run banners that go to a page like: /visitpage.php?id=87&url=http://www.mydomain.com On this page I write the details to a database and then redirect using header ("Location: url"). At present gbot is trying to index a whole load of root level pages with these query addresses i.e. /?id=87&url=http://ww.mydomain.com /?id=88&url=http://ww.mydomain.com etc Anyone seen this on their sites?
Not a good thing, in fact, quite spammy. It's called rank hijacking, among other things (seo spam). A good definition is here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/25638-39-10.htm and you should change your site quickly. I would not hesitate to disconnect a user for it myself. Lawrence NetMidWest http://www.netmidwest.com/
I think you misunderstand me. I have advertising banners on my site and like many others need to track click-throughs - like most sites I do this by writing to a database when a user clicks the banner ad - what's spammy about that?
Nothing is spammy, in and of itself, in tracking the click-thrus. I also realize you did not intend to do anything wrong. But the method you are using is a problem for Google. Googlebot is confusing your tracking url method for the site itself... which explains why googlebot is so interested in all of your tracked urls. Take a look at this page: http://wellness.phpdiscuss.com/ The links at the end are intended to steal the ranking of the sites in the url=" ". If you will also notice, phpdiscuss.com disavows wellness.phpdiscuss.com because they know it will generate complaints. Many such sites ping back to a server on a cable connection. Read the thread in the last post. I know it's long, but it shows the effect, and there are other URL's within the thread to look at. It is up to you whether to keep things the way they are or not, but don't be suprised by complaints. And who knows, maybe google fixed the problem. Oh, who am I kidding. They don't care about such things anymore. Lawrence NetMidWest http://www.netmidwest.com/